I read the first few pages of this book and decided to not continue reading it. The plot doesn't fascinate me and I felt like it was unnecessary to have an author's interlude before going into the first chapter.

Really cool/interesting read! But as someone with anxiety this definitely made me more paranoid.

4 stars

⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a wild ride. I’m not quite sure how Hank got into so many things in the course of his life, but they are all detailed here. If you’re not already freaked out about data security – who has your information, what they’re doing with it – you will be when you read this. I received this Advanced Reader Copy of The Hank Show from St. Martin's Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting story about an interesting man but it fell victim to the non fiction that leans more to dates and names like a textbook rather than true story telling. A lot of great facts about data collection and how it can be used but felt more like homework than enjoyment.

Despite multiple attempts to finish this book, I could not. I am sure it is on my end, but I simply could not connect and engage with this one.

This is another book where nonfiction reads like fiction and is unputdownable. However in this case it is actually kind of terrifying. The Hank Show is about Hank Asher, his life, and how he had such a huge impact on data and how it is used by the government today. The audio for this is excellent and I recommend not only this book but listening to it via audio if you can.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for the free copy to review.

I should love this book. I agree with the unstated but amply footnoted contention that Big Data is Bad, and was built that way from the start. But when reliving the utter and complete horror movie that was the 2000 election, an realizing what I'd hitherto not known...that this jackanapes was in the debacle up to his eyebrows...I lost any further interest in pursuing the read.

Just tell me where he's buried so I can go spit on his grave.

If you're more forgiving, or a lot younger and thus without the bad memories, than I am, go for it.

Quite an interesting read, kind of scary actually..... There's kind of two storylines going along side by side in this book.... one is about Hank Asher, who came up with the idea of how to 'stack/gather' information about individuals & the other is about all that information that is gathered & used for/against people......yikes! The book is heavy on the computer technology language, algorithms, analytics, data systems, data mining, data harvesting, data brokering, acronyms ....... keeps this from being labeled 'an easy read.' But it is very enlightening..... all the myriad of ways that every person is tracked....ID numbers, phone numbers, trackable cards/codes, SSNs, addresses.....it seems that everything we do/sign on to ....tracks us even further. It's definitely worth the read......& the Hank Asher aspect of the story is interesting too!
I received an e-ARC from publisher St. Martin's Press via NetGalley for review purposes. This my own fair/honest review.

Wow - what a fascinating read about an extremely eccentric man who actually created the databases that capture all of our information. Originally the plan was to help Law Enforcement and people like John Walsh who were looking for missing children but as we now know, the capturing of all this data has now morphed into not only impacting elections (think Cambridge Analytics) as well as using Facebook to track down persons who illegally entered the country decades ago. As I read this, not only is the story of Hank Asher beyond belief (think of "Catch Me if You Can." but it is fascinating how nefarious the data gathering has become as used by all types of corporations who capture and sell our data. Reading this felt like watching an out-of-control train flying off the tracks. Very scary indeed. The bright light here is that his daughters set up a not=for-profit that helps for free to find missing children (again back to the roots of what Hank was originally doing). This is quite an interesting read!

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.

2.5 rounded up. The first and last parts of this book are interesting held my attention. The long middle was tough. This book is basically about the history of data fusion as shown through the lens of one man. The first part of the book is his origin story. The last portion of the book brings into focus how everything we do is captured on computers and tracked and it's unnerving. The middle links the two and is pretty tedious. Glad I finished it, but won't read it again.

Hank Asher might not be a household name, but 'The Hank Show' by McKenzie Funk will convince you he's a tech legend. The book tracks Asher's journey from a drug runner to a pioneer in the data industry. Asher, working outside Silicon Valley's conventional paths in Florida, became a self-taught programming whiz. He especially excelled at parallel processing, a technique that speeds up computing tasks, which he brilliantly applied in his company, Database Technologies, revolutionizing data accessibility, especially for law enforcement.

Asher's creation, AutoTrack, quickly became essential for its vast database and rapid processing capabilities. He compiled an enormous range of data, from DMV records to personal information from credit agencies. This data powerhouse made Asher's company indispensable to various sectors, including law enforcement and business intelligence.

The book also delves into Asher's personal struggles, including paranoia and substance abuse, which eventually led to his ouster from his company. Despite these challenges, Asher's innovations had a lasting impact, influencing key events like the 2000 Florida election and post-9/11 investigations. 'The Hank Show' presents a compelling portrait of a man whose work continues to shape our data-driven world, even if his name remains largely unrecognized.

Thank you St Martin's Press!!

I have no doubt that this is the perfect book for the right reader. I am not the right reader.

The parts specifically about Hank, his personal life and such, were interesting. But the bulk of the content is dry, extremely tech-heavy, and overly detailed. I felt like I was reading a tech manual or taking a course in the history and inner workings of computers, statistics, and data collection. I couldn't force myself to continue. My brain was melting. This book is simply not reader-friendly for a general audience.

I enjoyed the book when the content was focused 0n Hank which was mostly during the first half of the book. However, there were too many technical details and so many different characters that I lost interest. More about Hank and his life would have been more interesting.

Hank Asher is the most important tech genius you’ve never heard of. That, at least, is what McKenzie Funk would have us believe as he starts his new book The Hank Show. And by the time you finish this captivating book you’ll understand why.

Funk’s nonfiction account reads like a novel. We follow Hank Asher from his early days as a drug runner who then reformed himself into the driven owner of the most successful condo painting company in Florida, only to top that by veering into a new career as a data broker.

Hank was in the right place at the right time. It was the late 80s, and personal computers were firmly established and growing more powerful with every passing year. Asher became a self-taught programmer, like so many others at that time. He became proficient in R:Base, one of the earliest relational databases for PCs.

He was in Florida, not Silicon Valley - where his unconventional ideas about computing would probably have seemed crazy and likely would have been discouraged. Out of the mainstream in Florida he was able to develop his genius for pushing both software and hardware forward unhindered. He pioneered some of the earliest and fastest parallel processing machines for databases.

Parallel processing is when you break computing tasks into multiple streams and feed those streams to multiple central processing units (in the case of Asher’s first attempt to multiple PCs networked together). If done right, this can enormously speed up the time it takes to go from question to result. Asher had the knack for doing it right.

When applied to large databases of information, parallel processing can lead to impressive results. So, in 1992 Asher and a partner founded Database Technologies in Pompano Beach, Florida. It was there that Asher first heard about the data broker business. Data brokers take public data and organize it on computers in a way that it can be easily searched. DBT focused early on Florida’s Department of Motor Vehicles records. The resulting product (the algorithms in the software, the data, and the parallel processing machine it ran on) was called AutoTrack and it was an instant hit with law enforcement.

By 1994 DBT had 2 TB of data, a huge amount for the time. They sourced data from multiple public and private entities, including lists of federal liens and bankruptcies, telephone directories, change of address info from the US Postal Service, corporate ownership records and more. In 1997 DBT struck “the motherlode” by obtaining name, address, previous addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers and other “header” information from the big three credit reporting agencies - Equifax, Experian and Transunion.

AutoTrack now was one of the largest “people” databases in the US, indeed in the world. And every law enforcement agency, every lender, every insurer suddenly wanted access to their data. Not only their data but their computing power, which thanks to Asher’s genius in parallel processing and his creation of innovative algorithms, was far ahead of DBT’s rivals.

One of the key themes of the book is the paranoia that Asher brought to his work. The former drug runner turned informant was never looked at favorably by the money men who could help turn his ideas into solid businesses. He abused alcohol and drugs, likely self-medicating for his troubled mental state and mercurial personality. As a result, Asher was forced out of DBT after it went public “for the good of the company”.

Asher went on to found two more companies, continuing to perfect his ideas and his products in the people data space. In the time between Asher’s leaving DBT in 1999 and his death in 2012, his paranoia, and his tech products, made their way into the national data infrastructure. The stories that follow his time at DBT find him and his “machine” at the heart of the nation’s business - in the controversial Florida 2000 election results, in the hunt for the identities of the 9/11 terrorists and those who might come after them, and in the welfare reforms of the Clinton era. All of these would rely in one way or another on the products that Hank Asher built. And his legacy is still with us, still tracking us all today.

Even if you’ve never heard of him.

A fascinating, page turning look at an incredible life. I really enjoyed this book and think others will also find it equally enjoyable. A mystery, a psychological tour de force, as well as a bit of a horror story, too. The author did a masterful job sharing his story of this very interesting (indeed) man, who has led a truly Mister Toad's Wild Road life.

This is the scariest book I have read in a long time--and I don't mean Halloween scary. McKenzie Funk details the life of Hank Asher from his drug-running youth through his tumultuous life of data collection, business successes and losses, women, and booze. Hank was the inveterate salesman with an uncanny ability to see data in ways that others could not. And he amassed an alarming amount of data on every individual who ever had a bank account, a driver's license, a cellphone, or had filled out a warranty card for an appliance. This book was an eye-opening testimony that the days of personal privacy are over. The famous six degrees of separation has dwindled to only a few. I will never again "friend" anyone on a social media platform. Everyone needs to read this book.

This reads like a tech manual. There are bits and pieces of Hank Asher's personal life sprinkled in there, but not in a way that is easy to follow. The timing in the narrative jumps around and there are so many tech facts and statistics that it makes this a very choppy read. Incredibly interesting topic and WOW does the author know their stuff, but it gets lost in the shuffle for us mere mortals.

The Hank Show is a true tale of a manic genius. His escapades made for a very colorful life, and his understanding of the world of data and all that it could provide to the world we live in was broad. Unfortunately, as with any good vision, there is a flip side. From reading about Hank Asher, we know that he didn’t start as an upstanding citizen, but the way he is portrayed in this book, the impression is that he wanted to make a lot of money and that his ideas about data collection and use were well-meaning. The long-term outcomes of using data for nefarious purposes did not seem to concern him. His goal with data collection was to catch the ‘bad guy.’ He lived a colorful life and built and burned bridges throughout his life. At times brilliant, at times crazy.
The book is a fascinating overview of Hank’s life and the results of all the different hands his technology has passed through. I will say that it is very involved, and it was hard to follow the story at points, but the sense of Hank’s manic energy and the poor choices and inappropriate uses of data that resulted were covered thoroughly. Anyone concerned about the safety of their data will find this information concerning, to say the least.
I was provided a copy of The Hank Show, How a House-Painting, Drug-Running DEA Informant Built the Rules of our Lives, by McKenzie Funk, by NetGalley and St. Martins Press for an honest review.

The Erratic Genius Behind the Development of Data Fusion

Hank Asher, a man you probably never heard of, was a pioneer in the development of data fusion technology. This technology is ever present in our lives from targeted marketing ads to data collected by our health care providers, the IRS, and law enforcement.

Asher’s career spanned a stint as a pilot running drugs in the Bahamas, founder of a house painting company, and finally a computer genius who developed data fusion technology. His story is fascinating. Funk’s presentation is like reading a thriller, but it’s a true story.

Data fusion relies on the ability to see patterns within and across data sets. Asher was a master of this and it was this ability that led him to develop the computer applications to use this technique on a commercial scale.

I was very impressed with Funks’ presentation. He’s able to give the general reader enough understanding of computer technology to make what Asher did understandable. He also presents the uses of this technology today and the privacy concerns it raises. Although Funk is a critic of the uses this technology has been put to, he acknowledges that it has helpful as as well as harmful applications. One of the helpful applications is finding groups exploiting children through child pornography.

I enjoyed the book. If you’re interested in privacy issues it’s a good source of information as well as being an entertaining read.

Thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for this review copy.

We have all experienced instances where we are sure someone is listening to us or tracking everything we do even if we don’t say it loud. And that is because everything we do is being tracked.

Hank Asher, a mad genius when it comes to data, started out as a house painter and drug smuggler and went on to develop the foundational and disruptive technical capability to grab Big Data and find the hidden obscure trends that are used in our everyday lives to catch felons and terrorist, determine risk for life insurance or credit cards and convince us to buy books and go on vacations.

Overall, this is a non-fiction book that is heavy on technology. Written by a journalist, there are a lot of facts, footnotes and citations. While the content is intriguing, and something I think everyone should know and understand, I was hoping this might have been a bit more consumable for those that don’t fall in the tech geek realm.